Barclays South Africa – Aliens

Aliens is the informal name of the Cape-Town based Digital Development team in Absa’s technology division, which specialises in mobile software development and technology research.

These special individuals boast a mix of top-notch technology skills and inquisitiveness that make them ideally suited to the tasks of looking after bread-n-butter products for the ‘Mother Ship’ in Johannesburg, deep-diving into research topics, and exploring product moonshots like a true fintech startup (on steroids!).

These ‘Aliens’ have been in existence for just over a year (formed 1 July 2015) and have grown to include 30 people across a number of skill sets, including software development, UX/UI design, scrum mastery and test automation. They form cross-functional teams that focus on product delivery.

The Aliens office is an experience all of its own – and nothing like what you’d expect to find in typical bank environment: lunch is on the house and our barista writes Java code on the side!

We look forward to welcoming your into our environment and hope that you will have as much serious fun as we do!

Click to enlarge each image.

Check out the virtual walkthrough!

Alwyn van WykLead Solutions ArchitectI have an opportunity to work on multiple different things all the way from working on technology to hiring people, to working [on] new products, to helping business people think about products, to working with designers, to all the way with people who are deep into robotics.

Get to know Alwyn. Read the full interview about his experience with Barclays here

Raghav Rmadya, iX Session 1 UX Design 2016Intern at Barclays

I have learnt how different things can be outside classroom. You might not have a defined path to achieve the end goal. You just need to figure things by yourself which can be stressful but it pushes you beyond your comfort zone. I have also learnt how to effectively communicate in a high pressure environment.